Review: The Cestus Concern by Mat Nastos

I was psyched to see that my Twitter compadre Mat Nastos (@NiftyMat)–who has read and reviewed several of my books over the past year that I’ve been chatting with him–had released a novel. The cover art drew me right in, and I was prepared for cyberpunk badassery on a massive scale.

As it turns out, The Cestus Concern is a bit more modern sci-fi thriller than cyberpunk, but that didn’t make it any less badass, and it most certainly did not reduce the scale.

The Cestus Concern starts off in a place which might be familiar to fans of the genre. A metal table, wires and tubes protruding everywhere, a sense of confusion and strangeness as the consciousness slowly returns after some sort of terrible accident. Unfortunately for Malcom Weir, things are only going to get worse.

This book is sheer, unmitigated, balls-to-the-wall fun that plays like a movie in your head. It’s impossible not to visualize the amazing special effects (and mind-blowing budget requirements) of this AAA sci-fi thriller. It’s action-film-in-a-book, filled to bursting with sickeningly-bloody violence, amazing mental picturescapes and a healthy dose of good humor to top all of it off.

Honestly, my only quibbles were minor and editing related; I had no problem at all with the characterization, plot or other important parts. I found a few places where words seemed to be missing, or when the obviously-intended word was replaced with another (I had an unintentional snort of laughter when someone’s hair was described as perfectly ‘quaffed’ — I assume it was supposed to be ‘coiffed’ but I spent the next few minutes trying to figure out how you’re supposed to drink hair…) The important part here is that the story was so engaging that my mind only made minor notes of these quibbles before hungrily moving on to the next word, the next paragraph, the next page.

There is no doubt about it: I loved this book, and would recommend it to any fans of action-thrillers, sci-fi, super soldier projects, or just awesome books.